Recruitment of seedlings and vegetative sprouts in unburned chaparral

Age structure of 12 stands of chaparral, unburned for 56—120 yr, was investigated. All shrubs produced discernible growth rings, and ring counts on stems from stands of known age, plus synchrony in annual growth ring width among species in the same stand, were taken as evidence that growth rings represented annual rings. Species that survive fire by vegetative regeneration from the root crown were capable, in the absence of fire, of continuously regenerating their canopy with basal sprouts. These multistemmed resprouting species had an uneven age structure, indicating continuous recruitment of new stems into the population. The predicted age distribution for resprouting shrub stem populations illustrated very different patterns for species within the same stand and for the same species in different stands. In most resprouting shrubs,